Happy Friday,
Did you know there are 35,000 laundromats in the US. Not one owner knows if their revenue is actually good?
That's not a small problem. That's a business.
In Todays Edition, TL;DR
Why boring businesses are the most undervalued data opportunity right now
$834B in government contracts, one terrible website, and a fix you can build this week
Perplexity just launched a billion dollar build competition
Three 22 year olds just hit billionaire status
The Friday Idea
💡 A revenue intelligence platform that boring businesses have never had.
The Problem:
Did you know theres roughly 35,000 laundromats in the US. About 16,000 car washes. Tens of thousands of dry cleaners, self storage facilities, and auto repair shops. These businesses run on cash flow, change hands constantly, and generate consistent, predictable revenue.
But the owners have no idea if that revenue is any good.
Not in a "could be optimized" way. In a "genuinely no external frame of reference" way. There is no public data, no industry dashboard, no benchmark report that tells a local operator how their numbers compare to similar operations within five miles.
🛠 Solution:
Someone should make a platform that connects to a business's POS or accounting software, anonymizes the transaction data, and returns one thing: how you compare to similar businesses nearby.
Think Glassdoor for local business revenue.
A laundromat owner logs in and sees: your monthly revenue is in the 62nd percentile for laundromats in your zip code. Peak revenue week in your category is typically the third week of January. Your revenue per machine is 18% below average. Here's what the top quartile looks like.
💵 The Business Model
Charge Operators a monthly fee: charge based on business size and data depth. The lower tier gets monthly benchmarks. The higher tier gets category specific pricing comps and seasonal trend data.
Acquisition reports: Charge per report for buyers doing due diligence on a specific business. Someone about to drop $400,000 on a laundromat will pay $500 to know if the seller's numbers are actually good.
Data licensing: long term, sell the aggregated dataset to lenders and insurers pricing risk on businesses they currently underwrite blind. This is the exit path
The Validation Filter
Why Build It Now?
Record M&A volume
BizBuySell recorded 10,000+ small business sales in 2023. Median price: $300K. More buyers in market means more demand for comp data.
POS APIs are open
Square, Clover, and Toast all have public OAuth APIs. Any operator can authorize data sharing in under two minutes. This wasn't true five years ago.
No one built it yet
IBISWorld charges out the wazoo for national averages. Brokers guess. There is no zip code level benchmark product for local service businesses. The gap is wide open.
Boomer exit wave
Baby boomers own an estimated 2.3M small businesses. The generational transfer is accelerating. First time buyers need data more than experienced operators do.
The Idea Scorecard
How to Test this in a Week
Post one question in r/sellingabusiness (just an example)
"I'm building a comp report for laundromat buyers, would you pay for zip code level revenue benchmarks before closing a deal?"Find 3 active listings on BizBuySell or any other business listing site
Pick laundromats in one city. Research comparable sales manually using broker data and public records. Build one sample report. This is your proof of concept.DM 10 buyers on BizBuySell
Anyone who favorited a laundromat listing in the last 30 days is a warm lead. Offer the sample report free in exchange for a 15 minute call. If they take the call, the problem is real.Charge for the second report
If even two people pay before you've built anything automated, you have a business. If nobody pays, you learned that in a week instead of six months.
Napkin Note Ideas
💡 The Government Is Handing Out $834 Billion. Most Small Businesses Have No Idea.
The Problem: The US government reserves $200 billion in contracts annually for small businesses. The portal where they live ( sam.gov ) looks like it was built in 2004. Filtering is sucks and honestly idk how anyone finds a contract on that site
The money is there. The store front is just terrible.
The Idea: A clean search layer on top of sam.gov. Type what your business does, pick your state, see contracts with dollar amounts attached. Email alerts when new matches get posted. That's it.
The Business Model
Free version: basic keyword search and state filtering. Designed for acquisition. gets anyone with a business idea in the door.
Pro teir: for email alerts on new matching contracts, saved filters, bid tracking, and contract deadline reminders. This is the retention layer. Someone actively chasing contracts needs this running in the background.
Agency tier: for consultants and brokers who file bids on behalf of multiple small businesses.
Weekly Gems Worth Reading
🤑 Perplexity just launched the Billion Dollar Build, an 8 week competition where teams will use Perplexity Computer to build a company with a path to $1B.
Meet 3, 22 yr old kids who have officially ranked as billionaires 👇🏻
😮 Greg Isenberg just laid out the clearest path to a $10M+ software exit in 2 years with AI and agents). Here’s what he’s thinking
Heres a cool find. The architecture behind $1M+ personal brands. check it out👇🏻
That’s all guys
Boring businesses. Invisible money. And the government sitting on $834 billion that most small business owners have never touched.
Lots to build this week.
Talk Monday.